Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
The safehouse smelled like starch and chemicals.
It made sense, given that it was above a dry cleaners, but Alyssa hadn't expected the scent to seep so thoroughly through the floorboards.
Every breath carried a faint whiff of pressing fluid and cotton, a bizarrely domestic smell for a place designed to hide people from killers.
The apartment itself was small and functional—a living area, a kitchen, a single bedroom, a bathroom with a shower stall barely big enough to turn around in.
The furniture was government-issue—serviceable, bland, chosen by someone who'd never considered whether a person hiding for their life might want something pleasant to look at.
The windows had blackout curtains. The door had three locks and a deadbolt.
A camera in the hallway was fed to a monitor in the living room, showing a grainy image of the stairwell.
Two agents guarded the stairwell, while others posed as dry cleaner employees, keeping an eye on the street and alley.
Temporarily home sweet home.
Alyssa set her sketchbook on the kitchen counter and looked around. Mack was already moving through the space, checking windows, testing locks, and mapping exits. She watched him run his fingers along the window frame, check the fire escape access, inspect the bathroom's ventilation.
"How's the arm?" she asked.
"Fine."
"Mack."
He glanced at her, his tight shoulders falling slightly with exasperation. "Better than it was. Claire did a good job with the dressing."
Claire had cleaned and wrapped it with brisk efficiency.
Alyssa had watched, struck by the way Claire handled him—professional, no-nonsense, the touch of someone who'd patched up operatives before and didn't have patience for their protests.
Mack had submitted to the treatment with the same reluctant tolerance he'd shown when Alyssa had bandaged him in the SUV.
Two women, same stubborn man.
She pulled her hair from the ponytail and ran her fingers through it. Evening shadows were creeping in fast. Had it really only been twenty-four hours since the party? Twenty-four hours since Jenna was still alive?
The past day felt like it belonged to someone else's life. The woman who'd stood in Rob Thorne's ballroom sketching guests had been replaced by a woman who slept in borrowed clothes, bandaged bullet wounds, and gave federal testimony against her own brother.
The debrief—she didn't want to think about it, but her brain wouldn't stop replaying it.
The recording device on the conference table, its red light steady and unblinking.
Agent Rojas from the DEA, calm and methodical, asking her to walk through the party one more time.
Special Agent Hendricks, taking notes on one side, Claire doing the same on the other.
And Mack. Against the wall by the window. His eyes on her the whole time, steady, anchoring, protective.
She'd opened the sketchbook and turned to Blake's portrait. Slid it across the table. "This is my brother," she'd said. "Blake Bennett. He was in the study at Rob Thorne's party, seated to the right of Mateo Vega."
The words had come out flat, factual, professional. The way Mack had instructed her. Stay with the facts. Don't speculate. If you don't know, say so.
She hadn't cried, hadn't hesitated. She'd given them everything—the faces, the room layout, the phone call, the six months of suspicion she'd ignored.
She'd answered every question, repeated details when asked, clarified timeline points, and identified the men in her sketches with the precision of someone who remembered every face she'd ever studied. Her brain worked that way, taking snapshots of faces to reproduce in her sketchbook.
When it was over, Agent Rojas had looked at her sketches for a long moment and said, "These are exceptional work, Ms. Bennett."
She'd nodded and thanked her. Hadn't told her that the exceptional work had cost her everything.
Now she was here. Above a dry cleaners that was a front for the DEA, in an apartment with blackout curtains and government furniture.
With the man she'd almost told she loved in the front seat of a shot-up SUV.
She wondered what Agent Rojas had thought when she'd slid that sketch of Blake across the table.
Whether she'd seen the way Alyssa’s hand trembled before she steadied it.
Whether she'd understood what it cost to say “This is my brother” in that flat, professional voice, as if the words were evidence rather than a eulogy for a relationship she'd spent her whole life trying to save.
Probably not. She'd seen worse betrayals than a sister turning in a brother. For her, it was just another day.
For Alyssa, it was the end of everything she'd wanted to believe about her family. And the beginning of something she didn't have a name for yet.
She rubbed her temples. A migraine was threatening—she could feel it building behind her eyes, that familiar tightening like a vise slowly closing. The aura hadn't started yet, but the pressure was there, waiting. Stress, adrenaline crash, not enough food, not enough water. The perfect storm.
“Take your meds,” Mack said from the doorway.
“Bossy,” she said. But she grabbed her bag and took the medication.
Mack finished his sweep and came to set the sat phone on the counter. He pulled two bottles of water from the go-bag and handed her one without being asked. “Drink the whole thing.”
“Again, bossy.”
He just grinned.
Alyssa’s insides warmed. She hadn’t seen that grin in…two years.
"Claire's setting up a rotating watch with Grizzly and the marshal," he told her. "Twelve-hour shifts. We've stuck here tonight. She'll check in at zero-six-hundred."
She opened the water and drank half of it.
Her mind flashed to the image Claire had shown them after the official debrief testimonies were over.
A man in a ballcap carrying cello case they suspected contained the rifle he’d used at the courthouse.
Claire had identified him as Eric Edwards.
A member of Vega’s carel. “And Eric Edwards? "
Mack's jaw tightened. "Claire's team is working on it. The FBI has issued an APB, and the airports have been flagged. He won't get away.”
"But he's still out there."
"He's still out there," Mack confirmed.
Eric Edwards was a man in his early thirties, of unremarkable build and no distinguishing features. You'd pass him on the street without a second glance.
That was the point, what made him dangerous. He wasn’t some hulking enforcer with neck tattoos, but an ordinary-looking man with a rifle.
Upon digging, Claire had found that Eric had been David Morrison's childhood friend who’d tried for the Marines and failed. According to Claire’s report, he’d washed out of boot camp while David made it through.
Eric had spent years on the periphery of the military world, watching from the outside.
He'd drifted into private security work, then deeper into the gray areas—the pipeline that swallowed men with combat-adjacent skills and no institutional home.
Eventually, the cartel had snagged him, and then his best friend had been killed in Syria.
Not long ago, he’d found Blake. Or Blake had found him.
Claire's theory was that the meeting had been engineered—Eric deliberately seeking out Blake, cultivating the connection over their shared grief for Morrison. He’d fed Blake's bitterness while Blake fueled Eric's need for someone to blame.
Two men orbiting the same dead man, building a mythology of blame that pointed straight at Mack.
The same lie that had destroyed her engagement. The same lie that had governed her life for two years. And now it had a man with a rifle pointed at Mack's head.
"This is insane," she said. She hadn't planned to say it.
The words just came out, propelled by a fury that had been building since Claire had laid out Eric's background at the courthouse.
"This man wants to kill you because Blake told him the same lie he told me.
The same lie he told our father. David Morrison is dead because Blake disobeyed orders, and Blake has spent two years convincing everyone else it was your fault, and now there's a—a contract killer out there who believes it. "
She paced, massaging her temples. "Blake didn't just destroy your career.
He didn't just destroy us. He created this.
Eric Edwards came after you because Blake needed someone to believe his version of events, and he found the one person who had every reason to—David's best friend. Of course he believed it."
Mack was watching her. His expression was unreadable, but something in his eyes—amusement? No, that wasn't the right word. Something warmer than amusement. Something that looked almost like wonder.
"You're angrier about this than I am," he said.
"Yes, I'm angry!" She stopped pacing and faced him, hands fisting at her sides. "Someone is trying to kill you, Mack, based on a lie. And you're standing there like—like—"
"Like what?"
"Like it's just another Tuesday."
The corner of his mouth twitched. "It's Sunday."
"Don't. Don't do that." She pointed at him.
"Don't deflect with humor. A man shot at you today.
At you. Not at me. At the person I—" She caught herself.
Again. The same stumble from the parking lot, the same word rising before she could stop it.
She swallowed it and pushed forward. "At someone I care about. "
He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "Come here."
She didn't move.
"Lyssa. Come here."
She went. Not because he told her to—she was done doing things because people told her to—but because she wanted to move closer to him.
To feel his heat, his solidness. She stopped in front of him, close enough to see the lines of fatigue around his eyes and the way he held his right arm tight against his body, protecting the wound.
"You want to know what I find endearing?" he said.